Portrait of a Woman in Blue
1700
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1700
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Portrait of a Woman in Blue is a 1700 unspecified by Peter Cross, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a blue dress looks straight at you, her face softly lit against a dark background. Her collar is lace, her hair pinned up—simple, but every detail feels real. Peter Cross painted tiny portraits like this on vellum, a smooth animal skin. Most artists switched to ivory by 1700, but Cross stuck with what he knew. His work kept the old style alive when others moved on. If you like this quiet kind of portrait, look up The Cleveland Museum of Art—they have more like it.
Living in London, the youngest of seven children, Peter Cross was probably apprenticed to a limner following the death of his wealthy father. His first miniatures date from around 1661, and he remained active until his death, ushering the medium into the eighteenth century; the greatest British miniaturists working during his lifetime, all had died or ceased to work by 1700. Although ivory had been adopted as a support for British miniature painting a decade before his death, Cross exclusively used the older medium of vellum adhered to card. The artist was also an avid collector, assembling…
This miniature is in its original ivory frame, stained a mottled brown to imitate tortoise shell.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Peter Cross (born 1951 in Guildford) is a British illustrator. His style features lifelike drawings of British wildlife, in cartoon-like situations. Ostensibly produced for children, they include sufficient visual puns…
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